The job market said no.
Build anyway.
A fully-remote, build-first pathway for first-time founders in the UK — designed to run alongside a job, a degree, or the search for either. No cash fee, ever. We put in nothing up front, and we take nothing unless you raise real money.
Rolling applications · fully remote, anywhere · no relocation, ever
01 · WHY THIS EXISTS
Every entry-level door got harder to open. So we're building a different one.
The junior tech job that used to be the safe first step is disappearing under AI-driven hiring cuts, right as more people than ever are trying to start something of their own. Most of them have never had a mentor, a cloud budget, or a single structured deadline. That's the gap this incubator sits in.
−8%
UK graduate vacancies in 2025 — with 42% of employers cutting graduate hiring
02 · THE PROGRAMME
Four stages. No stage costs you anything.
Everything runs online. There's no office to move near and no curriculum you pay to unlock — just an increasingly small, increasingly serious group of people still building.
00
Stage Zero — prove it, don't pitch it
Two weeks, open to anyone, no application form. Ship one small, real thing in public. This is the only "interview" — a pitch deck has never told us who's going to show up in week six.
01
Cohort — twelve weeks, fully remote
Structured weekly curriculum, mentor office hours, teams of one to four. You keep your job, your degree, or your other startup running alongside it — this is built around a life you already have, not instead of one.
02
The Metronome — one update, every Sunday
A single milestone check-in, due 5pm each Sunday, visible to the whole cohort. It's how momentum gets seen instead of guessed at — and how we make room for teams that are still moving when others go quiet for good. Life happens, so the rule has one written exception: every team gets one no-questions-asked pause per cohort. Two silent weeks is an exit; one hard fortnight is not.
03
Demo Day — in front of people who came for this
You present to investors who specifically asked to see a cohort that shipped every week for three months — not a room of strangers judging a five-minute pitch cold.
03 · THE STACK
Cash we don't have. Credit we can get you.
We can't write you a cheque. We can get every team applying directly to the cloud and AI credit programmes that would otherwise take months of cold outreach to even find — using your own company's accounts, not ours.
Honest numbers, re-checked against each provider's own pages on 24 August 2026. Every credit below is an application decided by the provider — approval is theirs to give, not ours to promise, and programmes change monthly. We help you assess eligibility and prepare the applications, on accounts you own. The catch for each is listed on purpose; the resource centre carries the wider map, and their pages are always the truth.
The playbook — how to actually claim it
Every name links to the programme's own page. Offers change monthly; that page is the truth, not ours. Rule one for all of them: apply with your company-domain email, not Gmail.
Free AI tokens
| Programme | What you can get | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic startup programme | Up to $25,000 in Claude API credits; rolling applications judged on traction. | Backing helps but isn't strictly required — a shipped product with users is your application. |
| OpenAI for Startups | $2,500–$50,000 depending on route. | Mostly gated behind partner VCs and selective cohorts — the hardest of these for bootstrapped teams. |
| Mistral & Together AI | ~€30k (Mistral) and $15k–$50k (Together) programmes, no VC required. | Small, competitive cohorts — apply with evidence, not intentions. |
| Voice-specific: Deepgram / AssemblyAI | Up to $100k–$150k for products built on voice. | Only relevant if audio is your product — but if it is, start here. |
The £0 stack: before any of the credits, the free tiers alone — Vercel or Cloudflare Pages for hosting, Supabase for a database, GitHub for everything else — will carry most products to their first users. This very site runs on them, for about £150 a year, all in.
Real money — UK routes, no equity taken
Start Up Loans (British Business Bank): £500–£25,000 per founder, up to £100,000 per business, fixed 7.5% over 1–5 years, plus 12 months of free mentoring. The honest catch: it's a personal loan — you carry it even if the company dies. Borrow what a plan can repay, not what the ceiling allows.
Innovate UK: the old Smart Grants have been paused since January 2025. What runs now is Growth Catalyst — including an Early Stage: New Innovators strand for small teams in critical technologies. Check the live competition list, not old blog posts.
The King's Trust Enterprise Programme: if you're 18–30, free courses, mentoring and funding support to launch — one of the most under-used routes in the country.
R&D tax relief: if you're building genuinely new technology through a UK company, a meaningful slice of that spend can come back — even pre-revenue. Talk to an accountant before your first year-end, not after.
SEIS is why UK angels write £10k–£50k cheques: 50% income-tax relief on up to £250,000 per company makes early UK equity unusually cheap for investors. Not a grant — but it's the context for every early conversation you'll have. And check your university: most run enterprise funds and awards for students and recent alumni that almost nobody applies to.
04 · THE TERMS
The whole deal, in one paragraph.
You pay nothing, ever. We take an advisory warrant for 5% of your company, and it only converts into real shares if you raise £100,000 or more from someone else. If you never raise, we own nothing — not equity, not cash, not a favour later. No board seat. No veto. No vote. When you earn, we earn. Until then, we don't.
Where that money goes. Into running the next cohort — the hosting, the tools, the admin that keeps this free at the point of use for the next set of founders — not into anyone's pocket. This is built to sustain itself rather than to extract from the people it's meant to help. If that ever changes, it gets written here first, in plain English.
What can't change. Cohort 01's terms are Cohort 01's, permanently. Any future change is published before applications open and never applies backwards to anyone already in.
05 · FOR INVESTORS & PARTNERS
Three months of proof, not three minutes of pitch.
Every graduating team ships a public, weekly, timestamped record of what they built — before you ever see a deck. If you back pre-seed teams or want to put cloud credit and tools in front of people who are actually building, we'd like to talk.
Get in touch about partnering →06 · QUESTIONS
The questions everyone asks before they trust this.
What's the catch?
The 5% warrant, and we'd rather put it first than bury it. It costs you nothing unless you raise £100,000+, at which point you're giving up 5% of a company that just got funded — and that money goes into running the next cohort, not into anyone's pocket. The other thing you should weigh honestly: no alumni, no proven network, one person behind it. That's the real risk, and it's yours, not ours.
What if my startup fails?
The warrant lapses and you owe nothing — no equity, no cash, no invoice. You keep what the programme gave you: any credits were approved in your company's name on your own accounts, the record of what you shipped stays public, and the skills don't go anywhere. Most startups die; we'd rather you know that going in and build anyway.
Do I need a co-founder or a team already?
No. Stage Zero is open to solo builders. If you don't have a team by the time the cohort starts, we run a structured co-founder matching process rather than leaving it to a hackathon coin-flip.
Do I have to relocate, or quit my job or degree?
No. Everything runs remotely, and the whole format assumes you have a job, a degree, or another commitment running alongside it. Weekly, not full-time, is the design.
Who actually benefits from the 5%?
The next cohort. The warrant exists so this can pay for itself instead of depending on someone's goodwill — surplus goes into the hosting, tools and admin that keep it free at the point of use for the founders who come after you. It also keeps the incentives honest: we only ever get paid when a founder does well, which means we're pointed at the same thing you are. If that model ever changes, it gets published here before anyone new applies.
Who's behind this?
Hogan Incubator is being built in the open by Ged Hogan, in Stockport, Greater Manchester — first cohort, no alumni yet, and we won't pretend otherwise. The legal entity behind it is Nexus Design AI Ltd (company no. 17264598), registered in England & Wales. Everything runs remotely, so where we are matters less than where you are: the programme is open to founders across the UK. No cash changes hands in either direction, and every advisory agreement is a standard document you can have your own solicitor read before you sign anything.
07 · COHORT 01
Cohort 01 is open.
No forms to notarise, no deck required yet. Tell us who you are and what you're building — four fields, straight to us, done in two minutes.
Not sure what to write yet? Take your idea through the Design Studio first → — an AI guide that turns half an idea into a two-week plan. It isn't the application and it doesn't score you.
Not ready to apply? One email when Cohort 02 opens. Nothing else, ever.
08 · YOUR DATA
What we do with your data, in plain terms.
What we collect: only what you type into the two forms on this page — your name, email, what you're building, and an optional link (application), or just your email (waitlist).
Why: to review your application and reply, or to send one email when the next cohort opens. That's the whole list. No marketing without asking you first, and we never sell or share your details.
Where and how long: stored securely with Supabase in London, with Nexus Design AI Ltd as the data controller. Kept while it's relevant to a cohort; deleted whenever you ask.
On this site: no cookies, no trackers, no analytics scripts watching you read this page.
The AI tools: messages you type at /studio or /resources are sent to Google's Gemini service solely to generate the reply — we store none of them, and using them is entirely optional.
Your rights: email hello@hogan-inc.com to see or delete anything we hold about you. If we ever handle it badly, you can complain to the ICO.